Vodafone lack of phones.

[Shokk]

Is it just me, or is anyone else a bit annoyed at Vodafone's lack of phones?

No LG v30 no pixel 2 etc.

Sorry state of affairs when I have to look in carphone warehouse for choice.

[Shokk]

Vodafone make billions on the contracts.

Which of course is reinvested, in the network.

They can afford to bring a Vodafone phone to the table.A couple in fact.

But can't afford to stock a premium flagship phone like a LG v30.

Being in the phone business, they should be stocking more phones.

[jeffkinn]

I'm afraid you that you're wrong. They don't make billions or anywhere close to it. The gross sales are only £7 billion and the profit to March 2017 was £1.2 billion. On the other hand they borrow billions to be able to invest in their networks. The last time I looked they had borrowings of £40 billion and the annual interest charge was £1 billion.

So no - they can't afford to stock those phones as they would lose money on them.

[Shokk]

According to reviews, on the LG v30 or pixel 2. These are hot items which people want to buy.

I fail to see how Vodafone can't make money selling a premium flagship phone, which people want.

[jeffkinn]

In 2016 LG only sold 55 million phones worldwide. Their UK market share is only 1.43%. Samsung and Apple between them are 79% - that's where the money is. They are quite right on my opinion to opt out of selling a few thousand LG handsets when the independents are better placed to service that market.

I had exactly the same discussions when they passed on the HTC M9 for the same reasons - it would lose them money.

[Shokk]

Agreed, they need to make money.

But offering basically a few hand sets to people is a sure way of loosing customers.

The public are becoming more tech savvy.

For example the LG v30 has great audio, and a great camera.

This for me is very important, if Vodafone don't want to sell me the phone fine.

It's a buyer's market, I'll go elsewhere.

When people start leaving because they can't get the phone they want, maybe Vodafone will take notice.

But with Samsung and iPhone holding 80% of the market ,I wouldn't hold my breath😏

[jeffkinn]

Let’s play with some statistics. Assuming that Vodafone has 19 million customers how many of them have pay monthly phone inclusive contracts? I don’t know the answer but let’s assume it’s 10 million. Let’s further assume they are all two year arrangements meaning that they sell 5 million phones a year. If Apple and Samsung between them account for 79 % of the market that’s nearly 4 million phone. LG at 1.43% barely reaches above 71,000. That’s less than 0.4% of their overall customer base. That’s why they don’t sell it and why people going elsewhere would be statistically irrelevant. It doesn’t matter if the camera and screen are fantastic.

[hrym]

I agree with just about everything @jeffkinn has said, but I'll add the investment of time and money customising the firmware.  OK, you can argue that isn't necessary (Apple devices see to do very nicely with the stock/pure version), but all networks do it and, as I said previously, it does add some functionality.   If a device sells in small numbers, at the very least, it's not going to be worth customising updates, leaving customers on outdated versions of Android and similarly unhappy.

As an example, I have an unbranded HTC One M9 which has got as far as Nougat (I doubt it'll get Oreo).   VF-branded versions are stuck with what they came with, namely Lollipop.

My wife has a VF-branded Sony XA, which the network were promoting quite heavily when it came out.   It may be a year late, but it has finally acquired Nougat.

[BandOfBrothers]

I was interested initially in the Pixel 2 and Xl version but at the moment people are reporting some issues including the blue tint although that's only really visible when the screen is angled away and not the natural way you'd look at a phones screen. 

As mentioned there are plenty of ways of acquiring a phone one is interested in. 

For me I remain Payg and buy my phones directly from Samsung. Not everyone's way but I prefer unbranded phones.